Today’s entry covers Chapter 24 through 26 of Towers of Midnight, in which we have dubious lawyer skills, dubiouser logic on behalf of foodstuffs, and dubious…est choice of Internet earworms.

(…um. Welp, they can’t all be winners!)

*slinks away*

Previous re-read entries are here. The Wheel of Time Master Index is here, which has links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general, including the upcoming final volume, A Memory of Light.

This re-read post contains spoilers for all currently published Wheel of Time novels. If you haven’t read, read at your own risk.

And now, the post!

Chapter 24: To Make a Stand

What Happens
Elayne’s midwife, Melfane, announces that her babies are fine, but she is confining Elayne to bedrest for a week, to Elayne’s horror. Melfane leaves, and Birgitte berates her for her actions, comparing her to “some blood-besotted idiot on the battlefield, charging ahead of his comrades, seeking death without a shield-mate to guard your back!” She asks why Elayne will not let Birgitte be her Warder as she is supposed to be. Chagrined, Elayne admits that perhaps Min’s viewing was not as proof against danger as she assumed it to be.

Feeling that knife enter her side, pierce her skin, dig toward her womb…that had been different. The terror. She could remember the world blackening around her, her heartbeat thudding, growing louder, like the drumbeats at the end of a performance. The ones that came before the silence.

Birgitte regarded Elayne appraisingly. She could feel Elayne’s emotions. She was Queen. She could not avoid risks. But… perhaps she could rein herself in.

Mat enters, and Elayne tells him of the assassination plan against him, which doesn’t faze him much. Birgitte reports that no one saw Mellar leave, and he took Shiaine, Marillin Gemalphin, and Falion Bhoda with him. Elayne fails to mention either the copy of the medallion Mellar took or the invasion Chesmal spoke of for the moment, and instead offers Mat back the original medallion as promised. Mat takes it back, hesitates, and tells her he wants to discuss something with her about the gholam.

Yoeli tells Ituralde that most of the civilians in Maradon have been evacuated, but there is little hope of outside aid, as Queen Tenobia took so many of Saldaea’s forces with her to search for the Dragon Reborn. Ituralde notes the inhabitants of the city are divided between those who sport Yoeli’s colors and those who do not. Yoeli takes him to the building where the former lord of Maradon, Vram Torkumen, is being held under guard. Torkumen greets Yoeli with contempt, and calls Ituralde an invader and Dragonsworn, and Ituralde realizes that the latter is actually true. He asks whether Torkumen cared about the invading Trollocs; Torkumen answers that there are always Trollocs, and threatens Ituralde with execution once the Queen returns.

“I see,” Ituralde said. “When did you turn to the Shadow?”

Vram’s eyes opened wide, and he stood. “You dare name me Darkfriend?”

“I’ve known some Saldaeans in my time,” Ituralde said. “I’ve called some friends; I’ve fought against others. But never have I known one who would watch men fight Shadowspawn and not offer to help.”

“If I had a sword…” Vram said.

“May you burn, Vram Torkumen,” Ituralde said. “I came here to tell you that, on behalf of the men I lost.”

Ituralde and Yoeli leave. Yoeli comments that he is not sure whether Torkumen is a Darkfriend or a fool. Ituralde opines that Yoeli will be safe from reprisal either way, but Yoeli replies that he staged a revolt against his Queen’s appointed leader and seized control of the city, and that he not only deserves execution but will demand it. Ituralde privately curses Borderlander pride, and urges Yoeli to swear to the Dragon instead, and fight at the Last Battle. Yoeli replies he will not “hide behind excuses.” Ituralde sighs, and decides that if Yoeli will not abandon Maradon, neither will Ituralde abandon him.

Perrin enters his tent and tells Faile that the Whitecloaks have chosen a battlefield. Faile is confident that they will win, but Perrin feels that they have lost even if they do win. He lies down and seeks the wolf dream, where he checks the Whitecloak camp again, trying to find out the name of the Lord Captain Commander, whose threats Perrin thinks have a strange sense of honor to them. He looks for the pack, but though he senses them they elude him. Perrin gives chase, going faster and faster, then becoming the wolf, but cannot catch them. Hopper warns him about being too strongly in the dream, and Perrin changes back and complains that they made him do that in order to keep up. Hopper replies that he is quick to blame, which is not a wolf thing.

The others all knew to end the hunt, Young Bull, Hopper sent from a distance. Only you had to be stopped.

Perrin considers that, and wonders if perhaps his lack of control was something internal to him, and not something that could be blamed on the wolves or being a wolfbrother, that perhaps the timing was coincidental. Hopper teaches him that there are other ways to track the pack: one is “to be where you want,” and the other is that every place has a scent-picture that can be followed from where a wolf goes from one place to the next. The lesson is interrupted when they feel another wolf, Morninglight, die in agony. Hopper urges him to flee, but Perrin is enraged, and follows Morninglight’s last scent, to find Slayer there, skinning the wolf’s corpse. Perrin roars and charges him, and Slayer disappears. Perrin follows him to a dock near a city, to Slayer’s surprise, and Slayer conjures a sword from nothing and blocks Perrin’s hammer.

The hammer bounced off too hard, as if it had hit stone. Perrin stumbled, and Slayer reached out, placing a hand against Perrin’s shoulder. He shoved.

His strength was immense. The shove tossed Perrin backward to the dock, but the wood disappeared as he hit. Perrin passed through empty air and splashed into the water beneath. His bellow became a gurgle; dark liquid surrounded him.

Perrin tries to surface, but the water becomes ice, trapping him until Slayer raises his bow, then parts before him. Perrin wills himself away at the last second, and Hopper appears and berates him for being a cub trying to chase down a lion. Perrin thinks about the things Slayer did and entreats Hopper to teach him more, but Hopper says they are done for the night. Perrin sighs and obeys, and wakes himself. He gets up and heads for the edge of camp (Gaul follows him), where he chops wood to help himself think. He ruminates on his methods of approaching problems (single-mindedly).

There had to be a balance. Perrin had claimed he had been pulled into a world filled with problems much larger than he was. He had claimed he was a simple man.

What if he was wrong? What if he was a complex man who had once happened to live a simple life? After all, if he was so simple, why had he fallen in love with such a complicated woman?

Elyas approaches, and Perrin asks if he misses his old life. Elyas shrugs and replies that he does not regret his choices, but Perrin doesn’t have to leave for the wolves like he did. Perrin points out that Noam had no choice in the matter, and Elyas has no answer for that. Perrin asks if Elyas ever goes to the wolf dream, but Elyas says it is a dangerous place, to be avoided. Perrin asks how he found a balance, and Elyas says he doesn’t know.

“It was just something I learned, Perrin. Something you’ll have to learn.”

Or end up like Noam. Perrin met Elyas’ golden eyes, then nodded. “Thank you.”

“For the advice?”

“No,” Perrin said. “For coming back. For showing me that one of us, at least, can live with the wolves and not lose himself.”

He tells Elyas to pass the word: they will be meeting the Whitecloaks on the battlefield the next day. He doesn’t want to do it, but supposes this is what being a lord is about.

But what to make of the vision of Faile and the others, approaching a cliff?

Commentary
So here’s the thing about Elayne: She’s an idiot in a lot of ways. But the thing is, I sort of have to like someone who’s an idiot in such selfless ways. She’s reckless and foolhardy, and it’s easy to regard her as a spoiled princess who thinks nothing could possibly touch her so SHE DOES WHAT SHE WANTS, but while there’s a certain amount of truth to that, I think that’s an overly shallow reading of her motivations.

Because, every crazy thing she does, she does in service not to herself, but to what she regards as larger than herself. To put it another way, she regards her own safety as less important than whatever she believes she is protecting, whether that be her friends or her country or the world. In other words, whether she consciously realizes it or not, Elayne first perceives herself, not as a Queen or a politician or an Aes Sedai, but as a warrior.

Because that’s what warriors do: they put themselves in danger so other people don’t have to. They protect those who cannot protect themselves. People become warriors for a lot of reasons, not all of them good, but the purest reason is that if you are stronger or faster or more able than the average person, you have a responsibility to use that strength in the service of those who do not have those advantages. With great power, etc.

And given that Elayne is one of the strongest channelers to be born in a thousand years, well. She is eclipsed by a fair number of other characters on the raw strength scale, perhaps, but that does not invalidate in the slightest the fact that she can do things that 99% of the people in the world, including many other channelers, cannot. Looked at that way, her attitude makes a lot more sense than it might otherwise.

You can certainly argue, of course, that it is irresponsible of her to view herself this way, given her position and responsibilities. And you would be right, except that at this particularly apocalyptic juncture of history, I’m not sure you can convince me that the leaders of the world shouldn’t also be warriors.

And, more controversially, you can also argue that it is even more irresponsible of her now that she is pregnant. And a lot of this scene here is Elayne coming to partially agree with the latter. If you ask me, though, this is only an extension of what I said above. Elayne is agreeing to protect herself, but only because by doing so she is protecting those who need it more, because they also just happen to be actually inside of her at the moment. That’s just logic, y’all.

So yes, Elayne is crazy. But, I think, in a very admirable kind of way. I have a lot of deep personal respect for what I guess you could call the warrior ethos, and that’s what I see when I look at Elayne’s character. And, I’m sure it goes without saying, I like it even more when I see it in a female character, because you don’t get to see that all that often. Take it for what it’s worth.

Yoeli is cool. Ituralde is cool. Torkumen sucks. Er, the end?

Okay, well. Yoeli regards himself as a traitor, and I’m willing to bet that by Saldaean law he probably is, technically. However, by modern military law I’m pretty sure there’s a good argument that he isn’t.

It’s been well established (if not always well-heeded) in most military bodies since World War II that not following lawful orders is a crime, but that following non-lawful orders is also a crime. And while I suspect that the Nuremberg Principles and the Geneva Conventions as written are probably a little fuzzy on the specific ethics of standing by while humans are slaughtered by the equivalent of monstrous demons from hell, I’m willing to go out on a limb here and say that it probably violates the spirit of the thing. Call me crazy. So from that point of view, Yoeli would be acting entirely lawfully when he told Torkumen to go fuck himself and took the reins, mostly.

Not that any of this actually matters from a WOT point of view, of course, but I’m just thinking out loud here, leave me alone. And of course, Yoeli’s traitorousness has definitely got my vote, so who cares what laws he broke, right? Riiiight. But seriously, there really is such a thing as doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, and I’d say you’ve got a textbook example of it right here.

Either way, three snaps in a circle to Ituralde for totally having the stones to call Torkumen a Darkfriend to his face. Even if he wasn’t actually one, his actions (or lack of them) would have made him just as bad as an actual Agent of Evil™. As Edmund Burke possibly apocryphally said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.” Word to your mum, Edmund.

As for Perrin, yaaaay for him continuing to have useful personal revelations! You can see him slowly but surely inching his way toward Sense, and it is awful nice, y’all.

Also, it is kind of crazy to realize just how much Perrin didn’t know about the Dreamworld at this point. I was like, dude, you really hadn’t noticed before this that you can manipulate the environment and create things out of thin air there? Because, wow, that’s like the first thing the Supergirls figured out!

But okay, I’m not blaming Perrin for not knowing this, exactly, since even Verin’s (in retrospect) craptastic super-brief briefing on the Dreamworld to Egwene in – er. TDR? – was a hell of a lot more information than Perrin ever got. But seriously, I was just startled that he hadn’t done something similar purely by accident by now.

Also, re-enter: Tool Slayer. BOOOOOOOOOOOO

Cool scene, though. Got the heart pounding, it did.

Chapter 25: Return to Bandar Eban

What Happens
Min and Rand Travel to a random street in Bandar Eban with two Maidens and Naeff, and the clouds break immediately upon Rand’s arrival. Min is horrified at the state of the city, which is even worse than before. Rand murmurs that Ebou Dar didn’t look like this, and the Seanchan rule better than he does. Min tries to protest that he isn’t responsible for this, but he replies that he abandoned them when he saw they were no use to him. Rand stumbles and sits, in pain. Min tries to comfort him, and he tells her that he will go on, but in opening himself to caring again, he has opened himself to acknowledging his failures as well.

“Rand, I see sunlight around you.”

He looked up at her, then glanced at the sky.

“Not that sunlight,” Min whispered. “A viewing. I see dark clouds, pushed away by the sunlight’s warmth. I see you, a brilliant white sword held in your hand, wielded against one of black, held by a faceless darkness. I see trees, growing green again, bearing fruit. I see a field, the crops healthy and full.” She hesitated. “I see the Two Rivers, Rand. I see an inn there with the mark of the Dragon’s Fang inlaid on its door. No longer a symbol of darkness or hate. A sign of victory and hope.”

She is surprised to see viewings around the refugees around them too, and points out a beggar who she says will be a leader in the Last Battle, and a woman who will become Aes Sedai. She says they will all fight, and she knows Rand will lead them, not from a viewing but because she believes in him. Rand whispers that she should see a murderer when she looks at him, for almost strangling her, and Min retorts that she sees nothing of the kind.

He sat up straighter. “Oh, Min. What would I do without you?”

She snorted. “You have kings and Aiel chiefs following you. Aes Sedai, Asha’man, and ta’veren. I’m certain you’d get along.”

“No,” Rand said. “You’re more vital than them all. You remind me who I am.”

He stands, and talks to the beggar, Durnham, who confesses he was once a soldier in the King’s Guard. Rand drafts him on the spot and names him Captain, and Durnham responds by recruiting some of the toughs hanging around. Rands sends Naeff for supplies to outfit the new guardsmen and Aes Sedai to Heal the sick, and Min watches in amazement as Rand organizes formerly hopeless people instantly, giving them tasks, apologizing to many of them. Within an hour he has five hundred newly outfitted soldiers, and Durnham suggests moving to the docks for more room. Rand agrees. Min points out that the people need food, and Rand replies they’ll find that at the docks as well. They go to the docks, trailing a crowd of refugees, and Min is surprised to see many Sea Folk ships moored at the harbor.

That’s right, Min thought. Rand had them bring food to the city. But it had spoiled. As Rand had left the city, he’d gotten word that all of the food on those ships had fallen to the Dark One’s touch.

The master of the docks, Iralin, has had them blockaded to keep the starving refugees from killing themselves by eating the spoiled food still aboard the ships, and berates Rand for the situation, who comments to an angry Min that it is no more than he deserves. He asks if Iralin checked every container for spoilage, and Iralin replies angrily that he checked enough. Rand gains grudging permission from one of the Sailmistresses (Milis) to board her ship, and leads Iralin down to the hold, where there are several opened sacks spilling fouled grain out. Iralin says that everything is going bad, and they’re all going to die before they even reach the Last Battle.

“Peace, Iralin,” Rand said softly. “It is not so bad as you think.” He stepped forward and yanked free the tie on the top of a sack. It fell to the side, and golden barley spilled from it across the floor of the hold, not a single speck of darkness on it. The barley looked as if it had just been harvested, each grain plump and full.

Milis gasped. “What did you do to it?”

“Nothing,” Rand said. “You merely opened the wrong sacks. The rest are all good.”

“Merely…” Iralin said. “We happened to open the exact number of bad sacks without reaching one of the good ones? That’s ridiculous.”

They open more containers, and all are good. Rand orders a kitchen to be set up to cook and distribute some of the food immediately, and guards for the rest. He names Iralin Steward of the city, to his shock, and Durnham his commander, and urges him to hurry in restoring order, as Rand can only stay for a day or so.

“A day?” Iralin said, still standing in the hold with Min. “To get things stable? We can’t possibly do it in that time. Can we?”

Commentary
So here’s a conundrum: were the unopened sacks always good, and it was Evil Rand biohazard may cause acne stank-nasty ta’veren mojo that induced only the bad ones to be opened in TGS? Or were they all bad originally, and then the unopened sacks became good because of reapplied Jesus Rand 100% pure farm-raised organic not from concentrate no chemicals or additives ta’veren mojo in this chapter? Tis’ a puzzlement!

For extra credit: which of these two scenarios is the more implausible? DISCUSS.

As for what happens here… it’s wonderful. And yet, I can’t help cynically noting that when things go as badly to shit as they have in Bandar Eban in the real world, nothing ever, ever works this smoothly to fix it. Probably because we don’t have any freshly reconstituted Messiahs wandering about as a general thing, but even so.

I don’t know, does that make me a Debbie Downer, to be more concerned with the basic unreality of this whole scene than with the hope it’s intended to convey? ALSO DISCUSS.

Chapter 26: Parley

What Happens
Perrin leads his army to where the Whitecloaks are staged, noting an odd stale scent in the air. Neald and Grady mention to him that they’ve tried twice in the last day to make a gateway and failed, even though other weaves work fine. They assure Perrin that it’s nothing, though. Perrin reflects on his hammer versus the axe, and realizes:

“The axe only kills,” Perrin said. “But the hammer can either create or kill. That is the difference.”

It made sense to him, suddenly. That was why he’d needed to throw the axe away. He could choose not to kill. He would not be pushed into this.

He gets the Aes Sedai, Wise Ones, and Two Rivers bowmen up to the front, and asks the channelers to blast the ground in front of the Whitecloaks, to unnerve them and hopefully prevent the battle from going forward. The Aes Sedai refuse, considering it too close to using the Power as a weapon, but the Wise Ones agree, and they and the Asha’man blast the ground apart, panicking the Whitecloaks. Perrin has the bowmen follow with a volley that falls short of the line, but clearly could have reached them. Then he asks Grady to enhance his voice so everyone can hear it, and shouts that he is here at the command of the Dragon Reborn, and is marching to the Last Battle.

“Lord Captain Commander, you demanded I meet with you on your terms before, and I came. I ask you to return the honor here, and meet as I request. If you are determined to kill me before I ride against the Shadow, at least do me the service of giving me one last chance to prevent spilling blood this day!”

He calls for a pavilion to be set up. Neald tries to make a gateway to retrieve it, but says neither Traveling nor Skimming works, so they have to send a rider (Robb Solter) for it. Perrin calls for Alliandre and Berelain to join him, and for tea to be served as well. Faile approaches, intrigued, and remarks that there is something different about Perrin, but opines that the Whitecloaks have already judged him and will not yield. Perrin thinks of the non-working gateways and Slayer in the area and the strange scent, and feels like there is something wrong.

The hammer could kill or create. He didn’t know which situation this was yet. He didn’t intend to strike until he did.

Galad had prepared for the possibility of fighting Aes Sedai (by telling his men not to attack them), but he sees the men in black coats and the Aiel women are responsible for the blasted ground, and is uneasy. Bornhald and Byar are incensed at Galad’s decision to accept Aybara’s parley; Galad wonders if he let them goad him into battle too quickly, but takes them with him to the parley anyway. Aybara is at the pavilion, along with three Aes Sedai and the Aiel women.

And then he froze. A strikingly beautiful woman stood behind Aybara’s chair. No, not beautiful, gorgeous. Lustrous black hair streamed down past her neck; it seemed to shine. She wore a red gown, thin enough to accentuate her form and deeply cut enough to expose swelling bosom.

And those eyes. So dark, with long beautiful lashes. He seemed…pulled toward them. Why hadn’t this woman come last time?

Aybara introduces Berelain, and Galad stutters before greeting her properly. Aybara also introduces him to Alliandre, Queen of Ghealdan, and his wife, Faile, noting her relationship to Queen Tenobia. He greets them all gracefully, and Berelain remarks on it. He introduces himself by full name, and Berelain asks after his half-sister Elayne. Galad hopes she is well, and Perrin interjects that she was fine the last time he saw her, and has apparently secured her claim to Andor, and he “wouldn’t be surprised if she’s looking to marry Rand by now.” Byar hisses, but Galad is not that surprised. Aybara declares that he knows what this is really about: the two Whitecloaks he killed two years before. Bornhald is furious that Aybara excluded his father from that count, and Aybara insists that the Seanchan killed Geofram, not him, and that his murders of the other two Children were in self-defense. Galad counters that Perrin attacked them unprovoked. Perrin replies that he was provoked; they killed a friend of his.

“A friend named Hopper. And after him, a companion of his. They were wolves.”

The man was condemning himself further! “You make friends of wolves, known to be creatures of the Shadow?”

“Wolves aren’t of the Shadow,” Aybara said. “They hate Shadowspawn as much as any man I’ve known.”

“And how do you know this?”

Aybara said nothing further.

Galad says that he does not accept the killing of wolves as exoneration. Aybara says there is more to it than that, but he doubts Galad will listen. Galad replies that they are at an impasse, then. Aybara asks, what if he were willing to stand trial. If he is proven innocent, he goes free.

“And if you are proven guilty?”

“That depends.”

Galad asks who could judge such a trial, and Aybara volunteers Alliandre, but Galad rejects her as being too close to Aybara, as well as Berelain (he and Berelain both blush at each other). Aybara declares the meeting pointless, then, as a serving woman approaches with tea. Galad moves to leave, and hears the servant gasp.

It was Morgase.

Galad froze, completely still. He’d been trained by swordmaster after swordmaster never to let his surprise overwhelm him, but at that moment, their careful training was for naught. That was his stepmother. That red-gold hair he had tugged as a child. That face, so beautiful and strong. Those eyes. Those were her eyes.

He touches her cheek, and she asks what he is doing there, and he embraces her, to everyone’s surprise. Galad immediately wonders if he killed Valda in error, but puts it aside for later. Aybara frowns and asks if he knows her.

“Aybara, this is Morgase Trakand, Defender of the Realm, Protector of the People, High Seat of House Trakand. She is your queen!”

That brought a stillness to the pavilion. Aybara scratched at his beard thoughtfully. His wife watched Morgase with eyes wide, either shocked or angry.

Aybara asks Morgase if it is true, and she admits it, but says she has renounced her throne for Elayne. Galad immediately declares he is taking her back to camp, assuming Aybara has been holding her prisoner, but she tells him Aybara is no friend of the Shadow, and she has more to fear from Whitecloaks than she does him. Galad asks her nicely this time, promising she may leave anytime, and she agrees. Aybara stops them, and asks if he would accept Morgase as the judge in his trial. Galad considers, and agrees. Morgase warns Aybara that she will not temper her decision for the shelter he gave her, and he acknowledges this. Byar protests to Galad that Aybara has not promised he will submit to punishment; Aybara points out that they wouldn’t take his word on it anyway, and Byar asks what the point would be then.

Galad met Aybara’s golden eyes again. “It will give us a trial,” he said, growing more certain. “And legal justification. I’m beginning to see, Child Byar. We must prove our claims, otherwise we are no better than Asunawa.”

Aybara agrees on condition that his people be released, and Galad says he will free them when the trial begins in three days. Aybara promises he will be there.

Commentary
Hmm.

Again, I don’t know how unreasonable I’m being about this, but I just expected… more, from the revelation that Maighdin = Morgase. At the very least, I expected a much stronger reaction from Perrin and Faile’s camp. At least a little more reeling in shock, you know? Especially from Faile, but even from the Aes Sedai standing there as well, not to mention Perrin himself.

But instead we pretty much instantly moved into how Morgase could be of use in this parley impasse. And while I’m not denying that she is about the best compromise Perrin and Galad could have found for their impasse, I’m just faintly irritated that there wasn’t more of a collective pause for everyone to reorient their views re: serving woman suddenly = exiled royalty, before moving on to practicalities.

Because, dude. That is a pretty big fucking deal! Come on! Morgase! Not dead! Been serving you tea all this time! Take a breath for that, people!

Granted, we’re getting this from Galad’s perspective, and he might not have been inclined to care as much what the Aes Sedai or indeed anyone on Perrin’s side might have thought about the whole thing. But, well. One of the things Jordan excelled at (and was one of my favorite things about him as a writer) was his ability to accurately convey what other characters were feeling about the situation from an outside or even hostile point of view. And that… kind of didn’t happen here, in my opinion. And it was a bit of a letdown that I didn’t get that, to be honest.

Speaking of which, I am entirely bemused at Galad and Perrin’s conversation here, because really, Perrin. I am shocked, SHOCKED that your scintillating defense of “I killed those guys because they killed my wolf friends!” failed to sway your opponent. I mean, sheesh.

Hell, that wouldn’t sway me, and I am on record as being very much not in favor of wolf-killin’ as a general thing, even when they aren’t of the vaguely magical talk-in-your-head variety. But as a general rule, killing animals for non-survival-related purposes should maybe earn one a kick in the teeth or two for being a sterling example of Why Humans Suck, depending on the context, but it should not earn one a death sentence. So, yeah. Epic fail on the arguing there, kiddo. Perrin, clearly, is not a lawyer, nor does he play one on TV.

That said, Byar protesting that the trial will not be fair because it will… be fair, is PRICELESS. That wacky zealot logic, man. It’s like Comedy Central up in here!

(Ugh.)

Most Beautiful Man Meets Most Beautiful Woman And Is Gobsmacked: AHAHAHAHA. Why this brings me such glee, I am not entirely sure, but I grinned dementedly when I first read it, and again just now.

And, you know, it would be nice if the whole “in your league/out of your league” thing wasn’t true, but, well. We all know it is. And like most Beautiful People™, Galad may claim that he doesn’t give a crap about his looks, but his reaction to finally meeting someone who (evidently) finally gives him competition in that arena kind of puts the lie to that. I’m just saying.

Re: chapter title: AHHH, to think I wasted my Pirates of the Caribbean cut text a couple of weeks ago! I should have checked ahead, dammit.

Few of the refugees had armor. Arganda had called them light infantry. Perrin had another term for them: “innocents with blades.”

In a few years they’ll have another term for them: “cannon fodder.” Yeah.